Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

And here I thought it was just an episode. . . .

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"Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot 'episodic' in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence." -- Aristotle

"When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." -- Raymond Chandler
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A bildungsroman has a lot looser weave in its plot than other stories.  Even if the heroine turns into a dove on occasion. . .

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Had two half ideas -- a magical system and a plot incident -- actually a fair chunk of plot, since that event had a lot of backstory.  How convenient -- plot and setting in one.  Was mucking about and putting them together this way and that.

The outline was not jelling.
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So the heroine is riding down the road, and I know there's a bit of a festivity ahead, and there's some people coming from it. . .

One's a little girl who starts to prattle.  She mentions the wizard (him I know about) and then a dancing bear. . . .

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So I sit down with an outline and some scenes and ponder.  I have the characters, I know who they are, and I know they find themselves alone in the space station with odd lights glowing places, and no one else around.

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So my muse was thinking about a fairy tale I read in a collection of Russian fairy tales that in fact collapsed two tales, and thinking hey, maybe that could be the central plot of a fairy-tale-mashup, with the ending elaborated a bit. . . neither one was a Pop Culture Top 20. . .and five second reflection continued it from its unhappy ending with a third not-Top-20 tale.

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grumble.

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how to develop an idea. . .

The biggest question is often whether you should go haring off every wild idea that comes along.

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Remember when Goodreads' April Fool was to claim a new Jane Austen had been found, Mirth and Mischief?

Well, my muse found it funny enough to look at.

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